Vanadium redox: powering up local communities

BILL HAGSTRAND
As Director of Cluster Acceleration, William Hagstrand drives NorTech's engagement with cluster organizations in advanced energy for opportunities and activities from inception to completion.

"Ashlawn Energy up in Painesville [is] a company that provides multi-megawatt energy storage solutions using -- and I have no idea what this is -- vanadium redox fuel cells. That's one of the coolest things I've ever said out loud!"President Obama spoke these words at the "Winning the Future Forum on Small Businesses" at Cleveland State University in 2011, highlighting a technology that has been studied for a quarter century but is just now being implemented in the United States. While "vanadium redox" sounds like something you would hear at a Star Trek convention, it has become a familiar term to the City of Painesville, which is working with Ashlawn Energy to demonstrate the technology's battery storage capacity at its municipal power plant. The technology uses a large battery to store electrical energy in tanks containing electrolytes, which are liquids that conduct electricity. Power is created by pumping the liquid from the tanks into a central fuel cell stack, where two different vanadium ions mix, causing them to change their charge and create electricity.

The use of vanadium – a silvery gray, malleable transition metal – in a power storage capacity has been studied for over 25 years and is being implemented in places like Ireland and Japan. The Painesville project is one of the first, large-scale, community-focused projects in the U.S. It is partially funded through a U.S. Department of Energy SmartGrid award of $4.2 million and slated for completion by the end of 2015. Vanadium redox fuel cells allow communities such as Painesville to produce power during periods of low demand and distribute it during times of high demand.The technology's capabilities allow for more efficient power transmission and distribution, accommodation of peak usage times when other power sources run low and improvement in the reliability of the electrical supply grid. "The electric grid in America needs to be more efficient and less polluting," says Ashlawn Energy President Norma Byron. "We are able to build Ashlawn's VanCharg™ system in Northeast Ohio due in no small part to Ohio's investments in fuel cell technology through the state's Third Frontier program. "The skills and capabilities are here. Ashlawn Energy is leveraging these capabilities to create quality jobs in the region we can all be proud of."

As a result of the Painesville project, 29 jobs have already been created. Ashlawn estimates it will create 212 additional jobs by 2016. The city will also benefit from a reduction in energy costs, improvement in power quality and reduction in carbon emissions by 24,000 metric tons. The Painesville project could have a far wider reach, however. One of the goals is to establish it as a national demonstration project so that other communities can understand the benefits of the technology.Vanadium redox joins a growing list of advanced energy technologies that are being developed and utilized in our communities. Many of these energy projects have been highlighted in this blog, including the work of thermal depolymerization companies Vadxx in Akron and RES Polyflow in Perry.In Cleveland's Collinwood neighborhood, Forest City Enterprises and quasar energy group collaborated to build an anaerobic digestion facility on a former brownfield site. The facility has turned organic waste into electricity since 2012 and employed the services of local contractors, manufacturers, suppliers and fabricators. In fact, over 75 percent of the materials used in the Collinwood facility are from Ohio.Further down the road in Dayton, AES Energy Storage announced in June that it will bring 40 megawatts of advanced energy storage resources to PJM Interconnection, which controls the power grid for 60 million people in the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States. The facility will be located at Dayton Power and Light's Tait generating station.As more projects of this kind are developed and sustained, communities in the region and across the state will benefit from prolonged storage capabilities, cleaner power output and efficiencies in transmission and distribution. In addition, the advanced energy work in Ohio brings millions of dollars in investment to the state, creates jobs and expands opportunities for the local supply chain.

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